The New Colossus is a historical mystery set in 1880’s New York, with Nellie Bly, the first great female reporter, as the captivating protagonist. Meticulously researched and blending fact with fiction, the story picks upjust after Bly arrives in Manhattan at age 24 with her ailing mother, lacking connections or money but blessed with an abundance of courage and reportorial gifts. Within ten months she lands two front-page stories on the country’s most widely-read newspaper, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. The pugnacious and voluble Pulitzer is so impressed that he assigns her to get to the bottom of an event deeply troubling him (and later puzzling to historians)—the untimely death of his friend Emma Lazarus, the controversial poet and activist.
At first Bly is skeptical but comes to believe that Lazarus was indeed murdered. Her investigation leads to tense encounters with some of the most powerful and ruthless men of the time, in an era where elected officials are bought and sold, and where greed runs rampant on an unregulated Wall Street. Outgunned and ignoring her contemptuous all-male colleagues, she has only two real allies: a doctor who uses scientific techniques to establish criminal behavior, and a gay theater critic with unlimited access to underground New York. As the pieces fall into place Bly comes to identify with Lazarus and refuses to be deterred facing ever-increasing dangers. Can a fearless and talented reporter find the truth when powerful forces are doing everything they can to stop her?